Jeffrey V. Ravetch, M.D., Ph.D.

Jeffrey V. Ravetch, M.D., Ph.D. is currently the Theresa and Eugene Lang Professor at the Rockefeller University and Head of the Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology.

Dr. Ravetch, a native of New York City, received his undergraduate training in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, earning his B.S. degree in 1973, working with Donald M. Crothers on the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of synthetic oligoribonucleotides. He continued his training at the Rockefeller University – Cornell Medical School MD/Ph.D program, earning his doctorate in 1978 in genetics with Norton Zinder and Peter Model, investigating the genetics of viral replication and gene expression for the single stranded DNA bacteriophage f1. In 1979 he earned his M.D. from Cornell University Medical School. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the NIH with Phil Leder where he identified and characterized the genes for human antibodies and the DNA elements involved in switch recombination. From 1982 to 1996 Dr. Ravetch was a member of the faculty of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell Medical College. His laboratory has focused on the Fc domain of antibodies and the receptors it engages, determining the mechanisms by which this domain enables antibodies to mediate their diverse biological activities in vivo. His work established the novel structural basis for Fc domain functional diversity and the pre-eminence of FcR pathways in host defense, inflammation and tolerance, describing novel inhibitory signaling pathways to account for the paradoxical roles of antibodies as promoting and suppressing inflammation. His work has been widely extended into clinical applications for the treatment of neoplastic, inflammatory and infectious diseases.

Dr. Ravetch has received numerous awards including the Burroughs-Wellcome Scholar Award, the Pew Scholar Award, the Boyer Award, the NIH Merit Award, the Lee C. Howley, Sr. Prize (2004), the AAI-Huang Foundation Meritorious Career Award (2005), the William B. Coley Award (2007), the Sanofi-Pasteur Award (2012), the Gairdner International Prize (2012) and the Wolf Prize in Medicine (2015). He has presented numerous named lectures including the Kunkel Lecture, the Ecker Lecture, the Goidl Lecture, the Grabar Lecture, the Dyer Lecture, the Heidelberger/Kabat Lecture, the Josephson Lecture, the Distinguished Scientist Lecture at the Academia Sinica and the Benacerraf Lecture. He has received an honorary doctorate from Freidrich-Alexander University, Nuremberg/Erlangen. He is a member of National Academy of Sciences (2006), the Institute of Medicine (2007), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2008) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009).

Ravetch has contributed extensively to the scientific community by serving as a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Cancer Research Institute, the Irvington Institute for Medical Research, the Damon Runyon Foundation, the medical advisory board of Gairdner Foundation, the Sanofi-Pasteur Award Jury and the L’Oreal Women in Science Jury. He has been active in biotechnology for the last two decades, and currently serves as a consultant or member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of Xencor, Portola, Takeda, Incyte, Momenta, Mabvax and Harpoon.

William L. Jorgensen, PH.D.

Dr. Jorgensen is a Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. He is considered a pioneer in the field of computation chemistry. Dr. Jorgensen earned a Bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1970 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1975 in Chemical Physics while studying under Elias J. Corey. Dr. Jorgensen then worked at Purdue University from 1975-1990 first as an Assistant Professor and then later as a Professor. He joined the Yale faculty in 1990 and has remained there since. Dr. Jorgensen's work has been recognized by many awards including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the International Academy of Quantum and Molecular Sciences. He has also received the ACS Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research, the ACS Hildebrand Award, and the 2015 Tetraheron Prize.

John L. WOOD, PH.D.

Dr. Wood is the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Professor and Cancer Prevention Research Institute Scholar at Baylor University. Dr. Wood received a B.A. degree from the University of Colorado in 1985 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He then moved to Harvard University as an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow and continued studying natural products synthesis in the laboratories of Stuart Schreiber. He joined the faculty at Yale University in 1993 as an assistant professor and was promoted to full professor in 1998. In 2006, he joined the faculty at Colorado State University as the Albert I. Meyers Professor of Chemistry. He has received numerous awards including a Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award in 1993, an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award in 1994, a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 1996, an Eli Lilly Young Faculty Award in 1996, a Glaxo-Wellcome Chemistry Scholar Award in 1996, and a Bristol-Myers Squibb Research Award in 1997.

Jedd D. Wolchok, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Wolchok is chief of the Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC); an associate director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at MSKCC, an associate member of Ludwig Cancer Research, and the Lloyd J. Old/Virginia and Daniel K. Ludwig Chair in Clinical Investigation at MSKCC. He is director of the CRI/Ludwig Cancer Vaccine Collaborative Trials Network, and is an associate director of the CRI Scientific Advisory Council. He is also the co-director of the Swim Across America laboratory at MSKCC, one of the foremost immunotherapy and melanoma research groups in the country. His specific research interest is the pre-clinical and early clinical development of novel immunologic therapies. Most recently, Dr. Wolchok has initiated several clinical trials using plasmid DNA vaccines for patients with melanoma. He has been involved in the development of the DNA vaccine program at every level--from initial studies in mouse models, through all levels of regulatory review, and now as principal investigator of the clinical trials.